The Wall Street Journal ran a story on January 15 suggesting that the era of unknown writers being plucked from obscurity is over. Called “The Death of the Slush Pile,” the story points out that when Random House pulled Mary Cahill from the slush pile in 1991 it was the last time the publisher published a work from its slew of unsolicited manuscripts. The writer adds that authors such as Philip Roth, Anne Frank and Judith Guest were all discovered from slush. But now, the slush pile is a thing of the past, the story says.

Well, duh.

Most publishing houses don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts for fear of lawsuits. And, yes, that’s a smart policy.

But just because a publisher’s slush pile is a relic of a bygone era, that doesn’t mean unknown authors can’t land a book deal! Unknowns do every day!

The article even tries to imply that Stephenie Meyer’s success story was a fluke. (OK, yes, anything of that magnitude is flukey.) But she got an agent the same way I did, the same way Emily Giffin did, the same way nearly all my friends who have novels coming out this year or next did, such as Kiersten White, Victoria Schwab and Heidi Kling. Stephenie Meyer sent in an unsolicited query to an agent.

The idea — as the story posits — that the assistant who asked to read Twilight didn’t know better because the novel was 130,000 words and therefore too long to be a young adult novel, must never have heard of Harry Potter. I’m pretty sure most of the books in that series clocked in over 130,000 words! Yes, Stephenie Meyer is a discovery, but no, her query shouldn’t have been thrown out due to word count, as the article says.

Agents read queries. Agents are hungry. Agents want books to sell. It’s that simple. Are there examples of writers who know someone and have an in to get an agent? Absolutely. That’s life and that’s how the world works. But in the literary world, there are definitely still slush piles and those slush piles represent untapped gold for many agents. Because that’s where most agents find their clients and their next sale.

Writers, take heart. If you write a great book and pen a great query and send that query to the right agents, you will likely find someone to pluck you from the slush.